How did it come to this?
by Ornery Otter
Summary: Sakura's thoughts on Team 7, set after Sasuke and Naruto fight on the roof of the hospital.


In the aftermath of Sasuke and Naruto's near fatal fight on top of the hospital roof, Sakura had done a lot of thinking. She wasn't a fool by any means, but she had been deluding herself for a long time and she knew it. Clinging to her idea of the world - with Sasuke as her dashing hero and Naruto as a bumbling idiot constantly interfering in their romantic story. She knew that reality was far far harsher than she'd let herself accept.

Sakura had to wonder if she was the only one who had been making mistakes though. That fight hadn't just been a momentary lapse; Naruto had a history of escalating things and not thinking of the consequences of his actions, and Sasuke...

She wondered now, where that willingness to kill had come from. It'd be easy to say that the massacre was the cause, but Sasuke had always specified wanting to kill _his brother,_ not anyone else. He'd always been angry, and honestly violent too - he'd shown it in every one of his spars since his family were murdered. When Sasuke had sparred at the Academy, he'd put kids down for good, beating them into the dirt and turning his back like he didn't care at all.

He probably didn't.

Personally though, and perhaps unkindly, Sakura blamed Kakashi.

He was an experienced ninja and had been for many years. He had tried to teach them a few important lessons, but it had been clear even from the beginning that even his most important one hadn't truly stuck - Team 7 had only come together in moments of true peril and even that was often instinctive rather than intentional in her mind. A holding on to of the status quo, rather than any real loyalty or affection between them.

But Kakashi had been a ninja for longer than she'd been alive and he wasn't unobservant, he couldn't have missed the truth, only failed to act on it. He was however a prime example of a powerful shinobi; still alive after many years, and horribly traumatised because of it. He was probably the worst role model for a group of misguided genin, especially ones with the sorts of issues that their team had. Disrespect was certainly one key problem that had never been addressed and had gotten them all into trouble time and time again. It was one thing for an experienced jounin to push the limits of respect - at least he knew where those limits _were_. Teaching genin that it was acceptable to be disrespectful, well, they were lucky no one had truly taken them to task over it.

For the rest of Team 7 not being taken to task for showing disrespect just exacerbated their problems. Even Sakura with her 'love' of Sasuke and her abuse of Naruto, she'd made it seem like it was okay to treat Naruto as worthless, all the while overriding Sasuke's own agency with her own wants and desires... perhaps even she had contributed to Sasuke's disregard of others, when even Sakura hadn't been able to show him that other people didn't attack their allies, that they listened to what their friends wanted.

For a long time Sakura had thought that Sasuke's haughtiness was just an act, especially since so many people let him get away with it - teachers, other ninja, shop clerks - everyone seemed to just accept his behaviour. After all, if he had truly thought himself superior to others such as experienced jounin, someone would have set him in his place, right? Sakura herself might have some issues, but even her parents had certainly put her in her place when she'd gotten a big head about being a ninja as a young girl. Not to mention Iruka-sensei probably spent 80% of his lectures trying to beat some reality into his students, if only so they didn't get themselves killed. A sense of entitlement was not something any shinobi should have, particularly a genin. It was just another thing that Kakashi hadn't dealt with though, despite likely having seen many others die because of such foolish mistakes.

But no, what she blamed him for was his real first lesson, the one that he'd never rescinded or even truly explained, perhaps thinking that they had understood the meaning behind the words, rather than accepting the words themselves.

 _"Come at me with intent to kill."_

That was what he'd said when he'd told them to try and take the bells from him, right back at their graduation test. He'd shown them that it was acceptable - that it was proper, to come at a team mate, a superior even, with intent to kill.

Sakura understood that it had been his way of impressing upon them the seriousness of the mission, as well as forcing them to muster up their determination - if they hadn't been determined to complete the mission, they would never succeed. Hinata was a prime example of what a lack of conviction would do to a person. He'd been telling them that this wasn't a game anymore, they were genin of the leaf. She didn't think that the lesson he'd intended to impart had been the one they'd taken in.

Sasuke had come to Team 7 with a boatload of problems, and telling an already loose-cannon to try and kill a superior, a member of his team? Really it should have raised flags that the young avenger seemed to have no concept of the disparity in his skill level and Kakashi's, not to mention his total disregard of his team and the value of their lives in general, as an expression of his loose grasp on reality. Similarly with Naruto, who had grown up running ahead and not having anyone to pull him back, to teach him the basic principles that framed all future actions. Things like 'don't try and kill the people who are meant to be your friends' would have been a good one, along with 'think before you act' or just 'think' in general.

She still couldn't believe that either boy had fallen for Kakashi's trick of telling them not to eat breakfast before their test - wasn't Sasuke from a prominent ninja clan who would know better about pre-mission requirements? And Naruto had literally just learned that he couldn't always trust his teachers, after what Mizuki had done, yet had given no thought at all to the orders he'd been given. Sakura ought to have been the only one to fall for that trick, given her background and poor understanding of the dietary requirements of being a ninja, but both boys should have known better - Sasuke as a child of a ninja clan, and Naruto as someone who was an active kid that should know to eat before doing anything strenuous (like pulling a prank and spending hours running from ninja).

It wasn't unheard of for ninja to be mishandled of course, especially the younger generation who just weren't as valuable as shinobi until they were trained. But if team 7 wasn't being invested in, why give them Kakashi; a trained, powerful and feared shinobi? Were they all intended to crash and burn? Were they ever meant to pass Kakashi's test at all? If they'd expected them to fail, Sakura didn't think they would have gone through the effort at all - if they didn't think that Sasuke could be rehabilitated into a reliable shinobi, they would have assigned him a handler and utilised him as a solo combat specialist. It was certainly not unheard of for shinobi to go off the rails, to be useful but too dangerous to trust, used like a kunai that cut the wielder as well as the enemy. She may have had her head in the clouds but she knew shinobi history from her lesssons, and the fourth Hokage had been revered in part because usually those with kill counts that high had mental instability to go along with it, something which made them unsuitable as leaders or anything more than weapons in the field.

So was it really Kakashi's fault, or was he set up for failure as much as the rest of them? Sakura still held his actions, and inactions, against him, but she knew her sensei, knew how distant he was with them, how haunted he seemed behind his stupid eye-smile and lame excuses for being late. She knew where he went.

They should have been better though, all of them. They could all have been so much better, and now she wondered if the situation was salvageable at all. Sasuke throwing around assassination techiniques against his allies, Naruto using massively destructive ones against his friend, on top of a hospital of all things. Their actions could have led to the deaths of eachother, as well as those in the hospital itself, had that rasengan gone down through the roof instead of into the water tower instead. She thought she could understand now, why she'd heard Konoha being called weak so many times. They were undisciplined.

Sakura heaved a sigh, frustration and despair rising high in her chest as she looked out over the hospital roof. If only either boy needed a swift smack then she'd be happy to grant them that, but right now, these personal issues had been going on for so long that she really wasn't sure how to fix them herself, and it was pretty clear that nobody else was doing much good. Honestly, what could she do beyond try and beat some sense into them? Even then, both boys were on another level to her when it came to combat. It was ironic then, that they were considered to be worse shinobi than her - combat prowess was only one part of what it was to be a shinobi after all, despite the boys forgetting that. The time for games and delusion were over, they were shinobi now and it was high time they acted like it. 

* * *

So I wrote this a while back and never posted it till now. If I've fudged the timeline or written something incorrect, please let me know - my knowledge of Naruto canon is very old and overlayed by a boatload of fanfiction which I may have gotten confused with, lol. Anyway, I just started playing FFXV and it reminded me to post it, because I see a lot of crossover between them (and not just because Noctis has duckbutt hair). Honestly I have a lot of problems with Naruto canon, and this was just something that came out of that. I think the Naruto-verse has a whole lot of potential and I've seen some really awesome fanfics that have come out of it, but the original content has always disappointed me with regards to its characterization.


End file.
